It’s Official, The Nokia X is a Hit as it sells out in Under 4 Minutes in China

March 25, 2014 - Written By Alexander Maxham

We had already heard that Nokia was seeing some pretty crazy numbers for pre-orders for their Nokia X that they announced at Mobile World Congress last month. The Nokia X went on sale today in China and promptly sold out in under 4 minutes. According to JD.com, the Nokia X had gotten about 1 million pre-orders in the first 4 days then 10 million within a week. However, pre-orders work differently in China than they do in the US. Basically pre-orders are like a reservation system in China. So while we’ve seen about 10 million “pre-orders” for the Nokia X, that doesn’t mean that Nokia has sold that many Nokia X’s just yet.

On the other hand, according to JD.com, the first batch of Nokia X’s went on sale this morning and sold out in under 4 minutes. Which is a good thing for Nokia, but it doesn’t really tell us how many phones Nokia sold. JD.com had a promotion for 10,000 Nokia X’s, so this first batch was bigger than that. But just how big that is, is still unknown.

What this shows us, is that there is quite a bit of interest for Nokia’s first Android phone, and that can’t be making Microsoft happy, especially with the deal becoming final next month. The Nokia X was meant to replace Nokia’s Asha line of devices, which are low-end or feature phone smartphones. Which Nokia still sells a ton of those, which we’re seeing them selling a ton of “Android” based Nokia X’s already. I put Android in quotes because it is a forked version of Android they are running on their Nokia X, XL and X+ smartphones.

While Nokia sold out of Nokia X’s today, the next batch is due in on March 31st – next Monday. So hopefully Nokia will have a larger batch of Nokia X’s available. This is typical of Chinese OEMs since we see this happen with Xiaomi and Meizu all the time. They put their phones on sale and within a few minutes they are sold out, and sold a few million. Which is pretty amazing, but that shows how big the smartphone market is over there in China.